Savannah Breeze (6 page)

I drove over to my rental properties: West Gordon Street, East Liberty, President Street, and Gwinnett. Each had the same discreet little
SOLD
sign in the window. The keys to all my houses should have been back in my desk at West Jones Street. But I had to keep reminding myself that the desk was gone, and so were those keys. Not that they would have worked. Reddy would have taken care of that too.

I was standing
in the checkout line at an estate sale in a cramped 1930s bungalow in St. Petersburg when my cell phone rang. I had to put down the heavy wicker rocker I had lugged all the way in from the garage. As soon as I did so, a heavyset woman with a tangle of wild, bleached-blond hair and heavily rouged cheeks sprang at it from out of nowhere, snatching at the arm, which had one of those magazine racks built into it.

“Hey!” I told the woman, my voice sharp, my instincts territorial. I plopped myself down into the chair. “Don't even think about it.”

The woman backed away, muttering something about pushy dealers. I flipped the phone open. “Hello?”

“Oh, Weezie.” It was BeBe. “I need you,” she whispered. “Can you come home?”

“Just as soon as I load the truck,” I told her. “Six hours, babe. I'll be there in six hours.”

BeBe Loudermilk was my best friend. I'd known her since Hector was a pup, and in all the years we'd been friends, even with everything we'd been through together, which included the death of both her parents and all three of her divorces, she had never asked for my help. So she didn't need to tell me what was wrong. I knew, from the pleading in her voice, that something was bad wrong. It was just understood that if she called, I would answer.

Of course, it was also understood that I would finish my negotia
tions first. I'm an antiques dealer, and junk, literally, is my life as well as my living. Even my own mother is aware that if, in the event of her untimely death, her funeral procession passes an estate sale on the way from the church to the cemetery, that limo will have to make an unplanned detour.

I'd been an antiques picker for years before finally opening my own shop a year ago. The shop is called Maisie's Daisy, and I named it after my grandmother Maisie, whom I called Meemaw. It's in the carriage house beside my town house on Charlton Street, which is on Troup Square, in the historic district. I've loved playing store, painting each room of the shop, arranging vignettes, and finally meeting the people who give my treasures a home, but the downside of playing store is that you have to have inventory to sell.

After only three weeks into what I'd planned as a month-long buying trip to Florida, my tail was already starting to drag. With the advent of eBay and HGTV and shows like
Antiques Roadshow
, everybody and their dog is suddenly hot to buy and sell antiques. Choice junk is even scarcer than it was when I started picking as an eighteen-year-old, and prices have gone through the roof. A scarred oak dresser I could have picked up at a yard sale for $30 three years ago would now be tarted up with a distressed white paint “shabby chic” finish and sold in junk stores for $150. Good smalls were sky high too, and you could almost forget about finding decent affordable wicker anymore. I'd scoured every inch of Florida, stopping at thrift stores, flea markets, junk stores, and estate sales, and my seventeen-foot U-Haul wasn't even half full yet.

Still, I'd had a good morning at the estate sale. On the way to breakfast at the Seahorse, my favorite restaurant at my favorite Gulf beach, Pass-A-Grille, I'd spied the handwritten sign tacked to a Sabal palm. I'd veered the truck so sharply off the road that two cars behind me blared their horns in protest. Breakfast could wait.

My pulse had raced as I backed the truck up to the curb in front of the weatherbeaten little bungalow. Joy of joys, I knew instinctively
that I'd hit the macdaddy fantasy of junkers—a real, true, amateur estate sale. All the signs were promising. The sale had not been advertised, I knew, because the first thing I'd done when I'd hit town was to buy a copy of the
St. Petersburg Times
, along with neighborhood “shopper papers” to look for sales. It was only Wednesday. Professionals never have sales midweek. Best of all, a frowsy woman in a flowered muumuu had set up a card table beside the front door.
CASH ONLY
said the sign scrawled on a piece of cardboard duct-taped to her table.

Within one frantic fifteen-minute sweep of the stifling little house, I'd scored big. The wicker chair had been hidden behind the garage, by the garbage cans. I always check garbage cans at sales like this because amateurs nearly always toss out anything they consider too old, damaged, or embarrassing to sell. I turn up lots of plastic hospital urinals, yellowed lingerie, and broken aluminum yard chairs in this kind of Dumpster diving, but just as often as not, I find wicker or rattan needing only minor repair, wonderful vintage children's books and games, orphaned sets of china dishes, and even whole sets of pots and pans. I can't sell pots and pans, of course, but most people aren't aware how collectible—and pricey—things like a marked Griswold cast-iron skillet can be.

Back inside the house, I'd found a four-place green depression-glass luncheon set for $15, a cardboard beer box full of vintage Florida road maps and old postcards for a buck, some ugly Royal Hager fifties flower vases in maroon, gray, and chartreuse for 25 cents apiece, a boxful of stained women's hankies for a nickel apiece, and another box jammed full of old Florida souvenirware from the twenties to the sixties. The Floridiana stuff was the best I'd found on the trip. There were a dozen old state plates with scalloped edges, all depicting different pre–Disney Florida tourist spots like Cypress Gardens, the Bok Singing Tower, Silver Springs, Weeki Wachee Springs, Monkey Jungle, and Gatorland. There was wonderfully hideous shell art too: a lamp depicting a Southern belle made entirely
of coquina and scallop shells, and shell-encrusted bookends and picture frames and even a naughty mermaid statuette with exposed coquina-shell nipples. I'd surreptitiously opened a closet door in one of the two tiny bedrooms and squealed with delight at what I found there: a gigantic stuffed and mounted tarpon.

To finish off the collection, I found a hand-painted juice set with a pitcher and six glasses, marked $5. I'd seen the pitcher by itself, priced at $35, in a vintage kitchenware price guide. And I'd never seen one with all six glasses intact.

I left the house with regret. It was the kind of old-timey beach shack you almost never see anymore. The front screen door had a stylized wrought-iron heron motif, the floors were varnish-darkened heart pine, and window fans had been jammed into all the open windows. If my best friend hadn't been in dire need, I could have spent another hour browsing. But time was short, and I still had to check out of my motel.

I hauled everything out to the pay table and wrapped it with my “Sold to Foley” masking tape. The muumuu-clad cashier didn't bat an eyelash when she saw the stuffed tarpon. “My daddy caught that in the Manatee River in 1968,” she said. “Mama raised hell when she found out what he spent having that thing stuffed.”

“How much?” I asked.

“Gimme five,” she said. “Thing stinks.”

She flicked her cigarette ash on the sandy yard and punched numbers nimbly on her tiny adding machine, pausing only when she came to the wicker chair. “Where'd you find that thing?” she asked, her eyes narrowed.

“In the garbage pile,” I said blithely. “How much?”

“That's real old wicker,” she said, realizing she had a live prospect. “It was in this house when my mama bought it, and that was 1962.”

“Fine,” I said cheerfully. “How much?”

“I'd need to get twenty-five,” she said, sizing me up.

“Fine.” I was reaching for my cash stash when I noticed the chair
she was sitting on. It was heavy old wrought iron, with a scroll-and-grape motif. There was a matching chair sitting off to the side too. It looked like it had come from a set of fifties garden furniture, the kind with the glass-topped table.

“Is your chair for sale too?” I inquired politely. “That and the one beside you?”

“I dunno. What'd you give for 'em?”

“Ten apiece,” I said quickly. “More if you have any matching pieces.”

“Ten apiece!” She laughed. “Lady, there's four more of these over at my sister's house sitting there rusting in the carport. Plus a table, but the glass top is broke, and a settee and a couple of armchair-type things. You want that stuff too?”

“Sure,” I said jovially. “I'll take all you want to sell. How's a hundred, even, for all of it?”

“Done,” she said. She picked up a cell phone that was sitting on top of her pack of Kools. “Let me just call my nephew and get him to haul it over here.”

“I've got a truck and I can pick it up, if you'll just give me directions,” I said.

An hour later, I was dripping wet with sweat, but the rest of the truck was now filled up. The garden furniture had been an unexpected bonanza. There were two chaises longues, a three-seater settee, a love seat, two armchairs, the glass-topped coffee table, and two end tables, not to mention the rest of the dining-room set and a planter. There were no cushions, and everything was crusted with corrosion, but I loved the set on the spot. It would furnish somebody's beach cottage out at Tybee Island, and once I wire-brushed it, spray-painted it, and had my friend Tacky Jacky make new cushions for everything, I could easily ask $2,500 for the whole set. Turquoise, I decided, heading my U-Haul toward I-75 and Savannah. All the pieces would be painted beach-house turquoise. I would have to find the perfect replica bark cloth for upholstering the cushions, but I
knew of an online place called Repro-Depot that had amazing reproduction fabrics.

As I was planning the fabulous window I would design around all the Floridiana, with the stuffed tarpon as its centerpiece, my cell phone rang, and at a glance I saw it was Daniel calling. Daniel. I hadn't thought of him all day. Or of BeBe, come to think of it, not since her panicky phone call two hours earlier.

Junk would have to wait. I had a love life to attend to, and a best friend to rescue.

Weezie's uncle James
has the kindest eyes I've ever seen. They're a dark blue-gray, and when he smiles, the crinkles reach all the way to his ears, and when he doesn't smile, his eyes still seem to say, “There, there. It'll be all right.”

Today wasn't one of those smiling days. We were sitting in his law office, which was in an old cotton-broker's loft on Factor's Walk, overlooking the river. A heavy gray rain was falling, and outside, on the river, the shadow of a freighter loomed ghostly in the mist, as though it were peeking inside the window at us. James Foley looked worried. He had a yellow legal pad on the desk in front of him, covered with scribbles, and a file folder full of official-looking documents. “You don't look so hot,” he told me. “When was the last time you slept?”

I looked down at my wrinkled corduroy slacks, at the sweater with the coffee stain at the neck, and the grungy sneakers I'd tossed months ago into the trunk of my car. These were the only clothes I had now other than what I'd been wearing when my life fell apart. I knew without looking that my hair was a wild tangle of curls, and that my nails were bitten down to the quick. I wore no makeup.

“I go to bed,” I told James truthfully. “But I don't sleep. I can't.”

James sighed. “I don't have much in the way of good news.”

“Tell me anyway,” I said, sitting up straight in the chair, the way my mother taught me to. I folded my hands in my lap and kept my chin up.
What would mama say?
I kept thinking. What would she say if she knew what I'd gotten myself into?

“Ryan Edward Millbanks the third doesn't exist,” James began. “Of course, you already knew that much. There is a Ryan Edward Millbanks Junior, as you know. He has some official-sounding title at the family's business in Charleston, but he doesn't actually work there. He's never married and he's certainly never had any children. He's what people of my generation would call a ‘confirmed bachelor.' Or, as my sister-in-law Marian would put it, ‘He's gay as a goose.'”

We both had a good laugh at that one, considering that James is gay. I was out of practice with laughing, but it felt okay, considering. And I got to see James's eyes crinkle, which was worth a lot that gray, awful day.

“I've been talking to Jay Bradley. Remember him? The Savannah police detective? And he's done some checking around. Unofficially. The man you knew as Reddy is actually named Roy Eugene Moseley. Born in Hardeeville, South Carolina. He's twenty-eight years old. Never married, that we know of. Previous convictions for bank fraud, forgery, theft by deceiving. He gets around, but up until this year, he was mostly a small-time crook. Jay talked to a police detective in…”

James peered down at his scribbled notes. “Vero Beach, Florida. They'd like to catch up with Roy Eugene Moseley and talk to him about some questionable business transactions he entered into down there. They figure he stole $300,000 from a fifty-four-year-old widow who winters in Vero. But the victim has refused to press charges.”

Victim. I winced at the word. I'd never been a victim before. Never allowed myself to think of the word “victim.” But I sure as hell felt like one today, sitting there in clothes I'd meant to donate to the Junior League thrift shop, living day to day out of the backseat of my car, sleeping on the sofa at my grandparents' apartment.

My car and the clothes on my back were virtually all I had left, except for Guale, which I'd had to shutter because I couldn't afford to pay my staff. Reddy had taken everything else. There was no palatable, socially acceptable word for me. I was a victim, all right.

“He used the same approach with the Florida woman that he used
with you,” James went on. “He scammed his way into some charity function, introduced himself, and very quickly charmed his way into her life.”

“And her bed,” I said.

James blushed and looked away. He'd been a priest for a long time before becoming a lawyer, and he was still pretty old fashioned. I guess he's not used to women talking about their sex lives.

I leaned over and patted his hand. “It's all right, James. I'm embarrassed. Humiliated. I slept with the guy, and he turned around and swindled me out of my life's savings. I'm a big girl. I'll get over the sex part of it. But I'll never get over how pissed off I feel about the rest of it. Pissed off at him. And at myself.”

He took a sip of coffee.

“In Florida, Moseley called himself Randall Munoz. There is a real Munoz family living down there. They're old-time sugar barons from Belle Glade. Moseley was passing himself off as a dot-com boy genius who'd made a killing on tech stocks before cashing out to live the good life. He somehow talked this woman into allowing him to ‘look over' her investment portfolio. Before she knew it, he'd liquidated everything, taken the money, and left town. This was in late January.”

“And he met me just a few weeks later,” I said. “The guy doesn't let any grass grow under his feet, does he?”

James shook his head. “Bradley says that's how these con men operate. They work fast so that the victim doesn't have time to ask questions or check up on their claims. You shouldn't feel so bad, BeBe. You're not his first victim.”

“Just his most generous,” I said bitterly. “And the stupidest. So don't bother trying to make me feel better about myself, James, because it won't work. Just tell me what my legal situation is. Bottom line.”

James shuffled the documents on his desktop until he had the one he wanted.

“These,” he said, patting the file folder on his desk, “are copies of the bills of sale for your home on West Jones, as well as your other real-estate holdings. According to the clerk's office, all the sales were executed three days ago. Apparently, you gave this Reddy person a power of attorney to allow him to make the sales.”

“No!” I exclaimed. “I never did anything of the sort.”

James held up his hand. “We'll get to that part later. The buyer of all the properties is a single entity, a corporation called St. Andrews Holdings.”

“I've never heard of them,” I said, near tears again.

“I've got Janet doing some research on them,” James said. “But the court documents look genuine. St. Andrews Holdings paid a little over two million for the entire package.” He looked over his glasses at me. “Cash.

“The paper he had you sign that last night aboard the
Blue Moon,
the one he told you was a purchase agreement for the house on Huntingdon Street, was actually a power of attorney,” James went on.

He held the document up. “Does this look familiar? Is it your signature?”

I put on my reading glasses and scanned the document, paying particular attention to the bottom of the document where “BeBe N. Loudermilk” was signed with its familiar loops and whorls. Too damned flamboyant for my own good, I reflected now, too late.

“This is my signature, all right,” I said. “But I couldn't tell you whether this is the paper I signed that night. It was late. I'd been drinking champagne and I was dead on my feet. And I wasn't wearing my glasses. Reddy, I mean, Roy, or whatever his real name is, had to show me where to sign. I did it, I fell asleep, and the next thing I knew, he was gone.”

James nodded unhappily. “It could be that he slipped some kind of drug into your drink. We don't know, because he cleaned everything on the boat very thoroughly. But that's what Bradley thinks happened.”

“What about this paper?” I asked, flicking it with my fingertips. “It's not legal, right? I mean, he had me sign it under false pretenses.”

“But it's your signature,” James pointed out. “There's no question about that. And the thing is, you gave him power of attorney, which allowed him to legally sell your house on West Jones, as well as the other properties.”

“He lied to me!” I cried. “I never would have sold my house. Or the other houses. And what about all my stuff? My furniture, my paintings, my great-grandmother's silver? And all my clothes. James, all my good jewelry was in the little safe in the floor of my bedroom closet. My mother's engagement ring was in there. And her mother's engagement ring, and oh God, Grandmama's rings. And her earrings and the pearls Granddaddy brought her back from Korea.”

Despite all my promises to myself, I broke down in tears again. When I found out that Grandmama had gone into the hospital, I'd talked my grandfather into letting me put all her jewelry in my safe. With the strain of her illness, I'd worried that he might hide her jewelry in the same “safe” place he'd hidden the Buick spare keys, which we still couldn't find. And now it was all gone. Along with everything else.

James stood up, walked around the desk and stood there, awkwardly thumping my back. “It's not your fault,” he kept saying. “Don't blame yourself. You couldn't have known.”

But we both knew it was
all
my fault. If I hadn't been so blazing mad at Emery Cooper for dumping me, if I hadn't been so eager to jump into bed with the first man to give me a friendly nod, if I hadn't been such a blind, stupid idiot, none of this would have happened.

It had been three days since I'd discovered the truth about Reddy Millbanks. Three days since I'd gone home and discovered that I no longer had a home.

I felt numb all over. So tired. My eyes burned and my head throbbed. I was cold. I looked out the window at the long, gray freighter that seemed suspended on a bank of fog.

“Did you hear me, BeBe?” James leaned across his desk. “Can I get you anything?

“We'll find out who this St. Andrews Holdings is,” James said. “We'll explain what happened. Tell them you were victimized. It should be obvious that they bought the properties at a fire-sale price. If they're a reputable outfit, they'll understand that you've been defrauded, and they'll nullify the deal.”

“And if they're not reputable?”

“We can take them to court. This was not a good-faith transaction. You've signed a complaint with the police, and Jay Bradley says there will be an investigation. I talked to Jonathan about it…”

He blushed again. Jonathan McDowell was the chief assistant in the Chatham County district attorney's office. He was also James's significant other. I would have enjoyed James's discomfort, if at that moment I'd been capable of enjoying anything.

“And Jonathan's going to have somebody from the DA's white-collar crime unit contact you.”

“What about my house?” I asked dully. “When can I get back into my house?”

James sighed. “You can't. Not for a while yet. I'm sorry, BeBe. But until I track down somebody with St. Andrews Holdings, I don't have any way to get you into that house. Or any of the others. They've been sold.”

“And my stuff? The furniture? My jewelry?”

“Bradley will be calling you. You need to give him an inventory of everything that was taken. If you have any photos, that would be really helpful. The police can check pawnshops and places like that. Bradley will be calling your neighbor to see if he can give a better description of that moving truck.”

“Steve Arrendale,” I said, my eyes blazing. “That pretentious prick. Reddy sold him the Maybelle Johns portrait of my aunt Alice. He won't return my phone calls. He won't even come to the door when I knock. Can you get my painting back, James?”

“Probably, but we'll have to take him to court,” James said. He coughed and stared out the window. “Look, BeBe. The thing is, Arrendale has already filed a complaint against you for harassment.”

“Me! Harassment? He doesn't know what harassment is. He stole my painting. He's lucky I haven't had him arrested.”

“Stop calling,” James said flatly. “Stay away from his house. You're not helping matters. We'll deal with Arrendale when things calm down.”

“And when will that be?” I asked, sinking down into the chair. “James, this sucks so bad. And it just keeps sucking. It doesn't get any better. I've lost everything.”

“Well,” he said, looking down at his notepad again. “Actually, not everything.”

“Yeah,” I said, gesturing toward myself. “I've still got my looks. Right?”

“That and the Breeze Inn,” James said.

“Say what?”

“The Breeze Inn. From the legal descriptions it appears to be a fifteen-unit motel on Tybee Island. Which you bought last week.”

“I never bought anything out at Tybee,” I said. “I haven't been out there in years. I hate the beach. And Tybee.” I shuddered. “Talk about tacky.”

“All I know is, the deed to the place is in your name. You, or somebody representing you, paid $650,000 for the Breeze Inn. Actually, this could be a blessing, BeBe. Tybee real estate prices have gone through the roof in the past few years. Even if this Breeze Inn place is a falling-down roach motel, it's got to be worth a lot more than $650,000.” He looked down at the pad again. “It's on 1.6 acres. On Chatham at Seventeenth Street. That's the south end of the island.” He smiled. “Maybe, just maybe, you're back in business.”

“I'll never be back in business,” I said glumly. “I've had to close the restaurant. I don't have the money to keep it open and make pay
roll. That's sixteen people who are out of work. Because I couldn't keep my britches up.”

James winced, but then he smiled that smile of his. “You know what my mother used to say?”

“Something relentlessly cheerful, I'm sure. But I don't need cheer right now. I need my painting back. I need my house back. I need my life back.”

James rocked back in his chair. “Still. She used to say, ‘God never closes a door that he doesn't open a window.'”

“And my mother used to tell me, ‘Vulgarity is the crutch of the weak and the ignorant,'” I snapped. “But what the fuck did she know?”